Cyborg Systems will have completed the first phase of a project for the Botswana local government in April. The project is valued at 5,3 million Botswana Pula (around R8,9 million at current exchange rates) and a possible extension of the project could increase that value to 9,5 million Botswana Pula (around R16,1 million).
Cyborg is a leading international Human Resource Management Systems (HMRS) provider and it is their expertise in this arena that convinced the Botswana government to award them the project.
The project specifications were simple: eliminate inefficiencies and `islands of information` in the Botswana local government by introducing an effective HRMS system. To this end, a variety of software modules are being introduced to address a variety of HR needs: payroll, training administration, leave administration, salary administration and more.
The final solution will join information seamlessly between departments, creating a centralised view of all processes, and be a significant step onto the Information Superhighway for the country. In this way, the information for more than 6,000 state employees -from municipal workers to council members- will be available for easy administration and analysis.
The initial phases of the project sees the solution implemented for the Gaborone City Council (GCC), the Kgatleng Land Board and the Department of Local Government Services - a ministerial "standards watchdog". The three will be connected via a Local Area Network (LAN) and be handled with a single server.
The next phase will see the councils of Maun, Kasane and Gumare come online - but these will be interconnected via a combination of wide area network (WAN) and dial-up connections. Their needs will be handled by local servers, connected via the WAN to a server in Gaberone.
The necessity of dial-up connectivity was a major reason for Cyborg`s selection. The Botswana telecommunication infrastructure experiences intermittent outages and the Government`s WAN is highly utilised. Cyborg`s robust solution, however, caches all data during downtimes, transmitting it when the connections become available again, obviating the need for the original source to resend - a unique Cyborg ability.
To ensure the Cyborg solutions is 100% compatible with the systems currently in place, the new systems will run in parallel with the legacy infrastructure. To ensure the smooth transition from the old ways to the new, Cyborg is providing two Human Resources consultants, two Payroll consultants, a Technical Consultant, a Project Manager and a Project Director.
But in keeping with the Botswana government`s policy of local development, the consultants are training a ten-strong Application Team, who will be responsible for training the other local members and serve as an Internal Helpdesk on the Botswana sided. In addition, Cyborg has allied itself with a local technology firm, Innovative Business Solutions (IBS).
Cyborg is both providing infrastructure and training IBS staff to be able to handle any requests for help the Botswana government may have. Of course, Cyborg will still be available to handle any problems IBS cannot deal with.
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Cyborg is a best-in-class provider of Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS), headquartered in Chigago, USA, with offices in South Africa. Over 1,400 hundred businesses, representing more than 6,000 locations and 5 million employees, use Cyborg`s HMRS.
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